Richmond Hill, Queens

Richmond Hill is a commercial and residential neighborhood of Queens, New York City. The hill, a moraine created by debris and rocks collected during the Wisconsin glaciation, was inhabited by the Rockaway Native Americans until 1660, when the Welling family purchased the area, then a part of the town of Rustdorp. The land became Welling Farm, while Rustdorp became Jamaica. Lefferts Farm, on the site of Richmond Hill, was the site of an American Revolutionary War battle in 1776. In 1853, the farming community of Clarenceville was established, and it was later renamed after landscape architect Edwin Richmond, who designed much of the neighborhood after 1868. It became one of the earliest residential communities on Long Island, and the streets were laid down to match the geography of the area. Clarenceville merged into Richmond Hill in 1872, with Morris Park following suit in 1894. In 1898, Richmond Hill and the rest of Queens County was absorbed into New York City, and the NYC Subway reached Richmond Hill in 1915. During the 1920s, smaller closely-spaced houses and apartments began to replace the neighborhood's large private houses. The neighborhood was originally Italian, Dutch, British, Irish, Scottish, Danish, and German, but, by the 1970s, it was mostly Hispanic, and, since the 1960s, large populations of Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Trinidadians, Guyanese, Surinamese, and Jamaicans arrived in the area, which became home to the largest Sikh population in the city. Today, it is known as Little Guyana-Trinidad and Tobago and Little Punjab, and it has a diverse array of religious buildings. In 2010, Richmond Hill had a population of 62,982 people, with 36% being Hispanic, 27.4% Asian, 11.2% white, 11.1% African-American, and 14.4% other.